WH40K: A Man Of His Word
by Sir Rawk
Summary: Greon Reacchus made a promise to his sister a long, long time ago. Now on a short leave from the Imperial Guard he plans to hold true to it. But things back home have changed. And not just the circumstances. Something has come to Verdantis Minor and it doesn't plan on leaving anytime soon - at least not without a fight. And this will be the most dangerous fight of Greon's career.
1. ONE

**A WARHAMMER 40K STORY**

 **A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..1..**

IT WAS A SIMPLE PROMISE that had dropped him into this mess. Waist deep in mud, surrounded by man-eating lizards with teeth as long as your trench knife. One simple 'By the Light of the Emperor, you have my word' promise to a sister he could barely even remember, who could be alive or dead, or on the other side of the galaxy for all he knew, and it was going to get him killed.

Greon Reacchus placed the racitor gun up to his chin for the umpteenth time. He scanned the marshlands through the iron sighting-hoops at the end of the ancient hunting musket. The nib of his forefinger gathered moisture against the iron trigger. If there was one thing he knew about the southern El Arboran delta it was that no man should be stuck out here on his own by nightfall, and expect to see it through to the morning.

Dusk was cutting long red fingers across the sky and soon the racitors would be crawling up from their watery burrows in search of prey. Human meat the pinnacle of their ophidian tastes, and the only thing to satisfy their scaly, capacious bellies.

Greon's arms were already beginning to shake.


	2. TWO

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..2..**

VERDANTIS MINOR WAS A RADIANT agri-moon in a small rural system within the Immrian Belt sub sector, along the eastern rim of Ultima Segmentum. El Arbora was a benign looking grey-brown blemish upon a green patchwork of luxuriant croplands that wrapped around the southern hemisphere of the moon. From the window of a transport shuttle it could easily be mistaken for something pleasant and quaint amongst all those neat, square tracts of zerrafam and catelepsean bean. Up close, however, it was anything but quaint or pleasant.

'Good time for hunting,' the mudhop vendor in Old Town had said to him through teeth that looked as though they had been chewing through engine oil.

They all had black teeth in these parts. If it was not the tropical gum infections that gave them a black grin, it was the wads of zerrafam tabac they habitually chewed and spat out in long streams of goop as dark and viscous as the mud they grew it in.

The vendor's right eye had been surgically enhanced with a red-tinted oculus. It made Greon wonder if the man had also spent time in the Guard. Not many El Arborans could afford such blessings from the Machine Spirit.

'It's racitor season, if you don't know. But by the Sweat Upon the Holy Throne, I ain't seen them spawn thick as this in fifty year', no sir! No one knows what's got into their big, ol' horny heads. Got folks comin' in from all ends of the Belt, lookin' for a trophy or other. Got no idea what trouble they'll get their selves into once they come up on one, mind!'

The old man spat over his shoulder, gesturing to the flooded forests and mudflats beyond the sprawling mess of his stall. 'We got eight million acres of black mud and treacle-slow bayous out there, and not a map to show for any of it. All El Arborans know it by heart, but folks like yourself need to keep their mind about them, hear? You got clutcher-vines, weeper nettles, zip-biters and frangleen leeches; not to mention racitors so big they'll ought to as not swallow you whole.'

'I know it,' Greon replied. 'I grew up in these parts.'

The mudhop vendor looked at him dubiously then, as though Greon were some offworlder dullard, perhaps suffering some sort of head trauma, or perhaps testing the length and breadth of the old goat's wits for no other reason than his own sick offworldly pleasure. The accent had been kicked out of Greon long ago.

'Is that so? Where you from then, boy?'

'Ironfig hold, originally.' Greon watched the old man's eyes startle at that.

'Well, mud in my britches, will you look at _that_! You come down with that last shuttle? You one of them Imperial boys on your leave, lookin' for a bit of downtime in old El Arb D?'

'That's me.'

The old man's smile was all black and twisted. He leaned forward then in a conspiratorial manner as all old locals do. 'You better be watching out for all them mudholds downstream, I'm tellin' you – Ironfig included. Been a lot of folk gone missing down them ways. Best take care and keep your scoot this end of the delta. Too many racitors and not enough men to hunt 'em down to more mannerly numbers, that's what I've been tellin' good people like yourself. Happens once in a hundred years. The Black Spawn we call it. Dangerous times. Can't kill enough of 'em. We're even seein' them come all the way up the waterways here into Old Town.'

'I'll remember that.'

The old mudhop vendor actually reached out then and clutched his forearm. It was a grip that hurt, which was commendable, since few men had arms like Greon Reacchus.

'Then don't forget it, boy. You stay up this end, and you stay safe, hear? I don't need no Imperial grunt gettin' all chewed up in my backyard, bringing his angry superiors in with their questions and dat' slates and such into town. Bad for business, you got me?'

Greon had pulled his arm away, wanting to give the man a taste of his hard left hook. He checked his temper and took a slow, deep breath. Fighting alongside commissars for years had taught him how to keep a cool head. 'I got you, old man. Now how much for that scoot over there?'

The vendor had cackled and wheezed. 'That one yonder with the old Alvar Edna motor?'

'That's the one.'

'I'll give it to you for nine-five, seein' as you're back home and deserve a fair price from an honest mudhop dealer like Chagwin Mulbar.'

'Throw in a full tank of premium grade spirit and one of them racitor guns, Chagwin Mulbar, and I'll be happy to give you fifty for it.'

The old goat glared at him then as if he had just called war upon him and all his sons and family. Then those black teeth flashed and he let out a loud whoop of pleasure. 'You sure is from round here then, drivin' a hard bargain like that! Not bad for a young pup. Well, that's a done deal, Guard boy! Fifty it is. These racitor guns are some of the best you'll find within a hundred klicks in any one direction.'


	3. THREE

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..3..**

GREON SHOOK HIS HEAD at the memory and prayed the racitor gun was the better half of the deal. The good 'ol Alver Edna had lasted just long enough to get him half way to his destination before the old motor sputtered out and died. The motor scoot was long behind him now after wading through mud as thick as treacle for the last three hours. Ironfig Hold was another twenty klicks somewhere in the hot, steaming distance. He was stranded in one of the most dangerous strips of nature known to man.

'Welcome home,' he rumbled to himself, gazing forlornly around him.

Mud covered the young guardsman from head to foot like a new fashion statement. The mucksuit was keeping most of it off but he was glad he had taken those vaccine shots prior to planetfall. If he ended up with a frangleen leech hanging off his face he might last a bit longer than the locals would.

'She's probably married and taken up with some spice trader from the mainworld,' Greon muttered grimly. He took another heaving step through the black soup of his homeland.

Damn it all to the Warp and back. He had grown soft. Too many years posted on worlds and moons, little more than tumbling rocks with weeds on them, waiting around in air-conditioned stations and eating perfect portions of MRE's. Playing Seven Hand Sam with his squad mates and drinking chugg until the sun came up. He wondered at times if there even really was a war going on out there. His company had been in two battles in all those years and those had been incredibly brief skirmishes; more a blundering circus of events than anything organized.

Bubbles erupted from the swamp, five meters from where he stood. Before he could even process what to do his childhood instincts took over.

Greon scrabbled up the nearest swooner gum, boots slipping and sliding over its spider-like root structure to get higher purchase out of the sucking mud. He cracked his shin against the hard wood and levelled the huge bell barrelled musket at the black morass below. His heart pounded.

The bubbling stopped.

Greon waited three whole minutes atop the swooner gum. His muscles strained against the ticking seconds until his arms and aim waggled about like a bad case of the Bombarder shakes.

The racitor gun was a clumsy weapon. Not at all like the streamline engineered Mars pattern IV las rifles used by the Imperial Guard. It was too long and cumbersome for a start to be of any use in a regular fire-fight. And the huge bell shaped muzzle gave it pitiful range. If you wanted to hit something outside ten meters you were better off throwing the gun at it instead of shooting it. But if there was anything coming at you, anything at all inside that ten meter kill zone, you could be rest assured, even with your eyes closed and poor aim, anything you were aiming at would be atomized along with a substantial portion of the environment around it. It was like a cannon shot. Except this cannon you could carry around with you and point at things. The racitor gun was a frightening weapon up close. It had to be, because it only had one shot.

That one shot, Greon knew, had to be capable of killing a creature that grew seven meters long and weighed in at a staggering two and a half tonnes. It took a full minute to prime and charge the next cartridge down the barrel, so it forced a hunter to choose his shot carefully. If the shot missed, well, then there would be just one more well-fed racitor swimming around the bayous.

Probably just swamp gas, Greon thought - though it was more hope and prayer than thought.

The muck-suit was about as light out of the mud as ancient heavy platemail armour. With its flex-foam heavy rubber overlays that were 'purpose built to keep the damp out' it was about as clumsy a thing as the old hunting musket was. Right now the damp was everywhere: in his socks, his jocks. And now the swamp-lice were making short work of his squeaky-clean skin, in all the worst places a man could imagine.

He lowered his aim a little to give his big arms a reprieve and let out a slow breath. A howling voice in the back of his head shrieked incessantly: _It's a racitor-it's a racitor- it's a racitor_!

His father had taught him from a young age how the big nocturnal lizards hid their iron-hide bodies just below the surface, looking like nothing more mundane than a floating log. Waiting for their unsuspecting quarry to blunder by before they struck. If you knew where to look you could tell if it was a log or not. Racitors had a triple row of horned ridges along their head. No ordinary log could be that top heavy and stay afloat. You might even spot their cold yellow eyes, emotionless and cunning as all hell. But you could count yourself a lucky man if you managed to spot a racitor's eyes before it got you. A racitor attack was always preceded by their frightful _THTICK-THTICK- THTICK!_ Deep sonic clicks they sent out ahead of them through the mud to locate their prey.

When Greon spotted a huge, dark shape a few yards away stretched out on the loamy shore his heart ricocheted off his ribs. He stopped breathing for several seconds, struggling to calculate exactly what he was seeing.

Gradually the broken pattern of camouflage foliage arranged itself into some order in his mind. Then the guardsman let out a long, low whistle of sweet relief. He chuckled to himself for being such a 'dryfoot' fool.

The old scoot, a primitive version of the motorised one he had left behind a few hours ago, was tipped on its side, covered over with dead branches and caked in dried mud. It looked like it had lain there for a good long while. A punt-pole lay next to it with dried mud and reeds stuck in the clawed foot at one end.

'"Fortune shines on those who wait,"' Greon whispered the old guardsman's adage. _And flees from those who pursue it_ the verse wrapped up. It was this old saying that held him in place, balanced atop the roots of the swooner gum, glaring at the spot where the bubbles had erupted.

It was this moment, the point between doom and salvation, that hurled the worst of torments upon a desperate man.

The scoot was on dry land and that dry land was only five or six strides away. But from where the roots of the swooner gum dipped back down into the muck, the mud was easily waist deep, likely deeper. A rot hole could open up beneath your boots and suddenly you could be swimming in it. The land in these parts was about as even as the water was clean.

Doom or salvation, salvation or doom? Would he make it to shore before doom swam up behind him and swallowed him whole?

Greon shook his head at all the thinking he was doing. What good did thinking do a dead man anyway? He took a deep breath, and gauged the distance. With a barbaric war cry he leapt into the swamp.

His boots touched down and the mud slid up under the armpits of his mucksuit. The young guardsman charged for the shoreline. He felt like an agateshell hatchling breaking from the egg and flapping its little way down to the shoreline in the hope to get into the water before the devilbeaks got to it. It was a nightmare pursuit, wading through thick treacle.

Then he hit the sharp angle of the shoreline and up he went, as fast as he could crawl. His thoughts burst with visions of steel snapping jaws tearing up from the black depths behind him.

But the inevitable did not occur. Not this time. Not today. Not yet.


	4. FOUR

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..4..**

HAPPENING UPON AN OLD EL ARBORAN marshland scoot was as much a miracle to Greon Reacches as blundering into an Imperial Navy Strike Fighter docked in the middle of the swamp with its pilot grinning from the cockpit window, giving him the thumbs up.

Greon sank to his knees and could have wept. Reverently he brushed his hands over the thin, bone-dry wood. He righted the primitive vessel and inspected its long, flat hull for fractures or perforations. It may have been old, the wood extremely worn down through time, but it was serviceable enough for his needs.

He offered a quick prayer of thanks to the Emperor of Mankind for shining just a little light on him today. Not that there was much of it left. The sky was turning a deep, coal red as Verdantis Minor drifted into the shadow of its mainworld.

It did not take long to rediscover all the old tricks from childhood. He found the sweet spot at the end of the scoot as close to the huff as he could get. There he could plant his feet firmly and not topple over the side. He had cast his boots off without knowing it. As a kid he had never worn shoes, even as a young adult, until he had joined the Imperial Guard. He had forgotten how pleasurable such an experience could be. Punting down the bayou without a care, like he was twelve again. He pushed down the punt-pole, only needing to use a third of its generous length, urging the scoot across the marshlands with small shunts and tweaks, mobilizing his centre of gravity with the primitive vessel so that it became an extension of himself. He was getting back his 'swamp toes' as the locals called it. He pushed against the graceless current. When he came to a bend in the canal he would take the inside for economy of motion. It may not have been as safe or as fast as a motor launch but it was a damn sight better than wading neck deep through the dangerous, pestiferous swamp.

Greon felt a smile warming his face. He was on a scoot again and headed home.

His good cheer lasted three hours.

Ironfig loomed up from the mists and the flooded forests. The sunset was burning lower and lower as the agri-moon of Verdantis Minor was slowly passed over by its mainworld. Inevitably it would lose the race and Verdantis Major would steal all its light, as it had done for billions of years, making ruddy afternoons like this one drag out long into the evening. But as Greon's eyes pierced through the crimson gloom, the real fears that had been locked away, the ones that had plagued him as long as he had been with the Guard, hit him hard in the chest.

Ironfig Hold had sunken into the bayou like an aged ebony skeleton of shattered wood and rotted boards. A desolate ghost town of platforms. Stilts bent sickeningly beneath collapsed tar-coated, clinker-built habs. Broken rope bridges that once gave avenue between the dwellings now trailed in the watery boulevards like giant weeds. The devastation was complete. The spectacle was incomparable to the memories of his childhood, so he felt only a cold and distant shock at the discovery.

A few dwellings still stood amongst the sad ruin. Old Kassdan's mudhop market, along with what must have been Lubryte's Cantina, though the signs were no longer up and all the merchandise long pilfered or sunken deep into the marsh water.

Usually when you entered a mudhold like Ironfig you were welcomed with the earnest racket of laughter and cussing, the thump and strum of tumble-strings and a fiddleneck, the clapping of hands, the rich aroma of simmering jamba stews and boiling sweet tea. There would be people everywhere locked in a hullabaloo of intermingling, sweaty congress.

Now, in the bleeding light and shadows, there was nothing but the eerie silence and the smell of burnt wood, dried up weed and rotten fish.

Greon poled the scoot along the channel that ran down the middle of the hold. Morvey's Boulevard he remembered it as, but all the signs had collapsed or rotted away. He was about to give up the whole thing as a complete waste of time and money, cursing himself for being an over sentimental fool, when he noticed a flash of white amongst the ruin.

It was a young woman in a simple, white dress. She stood out in pale contrast to the dying light of day and the burnt-out frames poking up around her. Contradictory realities fighting for the same world. Like a lost ghost. And though she was plainly dressed she was almost fey in the ruddy glow, holding onto a large basket of apple-beets in her frail arms. The fading dusk light glinted in her glossy, black hair.

Greon pushed the scoot to the side of the boulevard and put a foot atop the boardwalk to keep the vessel in place.

'Excuse me, ma'am?' he called out, remembering his Southern Delta manners. 'Are you from around this way?'

The woman jumped at the sound of his voice, her eyes flashed. She had the sharp, tawny features of all El Arborans. Beautiful but shrewd angles in cheekbone and chin. She looked down at him with one hand against her brow, the other balancing the basket of apple-beets on her hip.

'Does it look like I'm from elsewheres', stranger?' she called in a voice that struck him as odd, while at the same time drilling deep within him until it extracted a soft rarefied vein of memory.

Greon's heart did a flip. He almost toppled back into the bayou there and then. As soon as he regained his composure and his balance he clambered up onto the boardwalk, the punt-pole drumming onto the boards as he raced toward her.

'Mericca-Ann? Is that _you_?'

Mericca Ann Reacchus's face plummeted from bright and terrified to an incredulous pale. Her mouth opened wordlessly and all the apple-beets thumped and tumbled across the boardwalk.

'Gree?' she whispered. Her eyes wild with disbelief. 'What you doin' here? I thought you'd gone and got yourself killed out beyond the Belt!'

Greon Reacchus hugged his sister about as fiercely as a man of his strength could without breaking her back, not caring if she could breathe or not. She let him hug her too. The reunited siblings stood that way for a long time. Tears in their eyes, stupefied grins on their faces.

'Emperor's Mercy,' Greon cried in disbelief. 'I never thought I'd see you again!'

He held her outstretched in his arms, gazing down at his little sister who had grown into a tall, young woman. She was strange to him. Long and bony, poorly fed perhaps, yet she still had that same nub of a nose, those same tiny ears like their mother's.

'Are you well, Merri?' he asked. 'It's so good to see you! Alive and - _grown up_! When I found the village like this I feared the worst.'

She swiped tears from her russet cheeks. She looked down at the boardwalk, at the strewn apple-beets. 'I'm sorry, Gree. It's such a shock. It's been so long, I never thought you'd come back. Not when they took you away like that.'

'I made a promise, Merrica Ann. Remember? I'm here, just like I said I would.'

She sniffed and shook her head, waving one hand at her face as if to dry the tears away, or to shake the shock from her trembling fingers. 'Oh dear me, we weren't expecting any visitors today.'

'We?'

'Rolly and I. Oh my, it's been so long, Gree. I got myself married. Rollam Grellis is his name. He's from all the way over in Whistle Stilt. We got hitched 'bout five years ago. We got two little ones.' she glanced around then, looking up and down the shattered boardwalk. 'They'll be runnin' round here somewheres, makin' more trouble for themselves than not. My word, Gree, it's been such a tragic long time.'

'Twelve years, three months, and-' Greon stopped. It certainly _had_ been a long time. Just seeing a face as familiar as Mericca Ann's made all the words catch in his throat. And although she seemed a little troubled by his arrival, which he could not blame her for, he had not anticipated the happiness and excitement he felt to finally look upon a living member of his family.

They talked for a long while there atop the boardwalk as the red light faded and faded, until the night was lit by the sharp, pale arc cast off from the edge of the mainworld. Greon told his sister of his exploits in the Imperial Guard, how he had survived two minor battles, the monotony of guard duty, the worlds he had visited, how this was the first time the Departmento Munitorum had assigned his company special leave since he had been conscripted. An entire two weeks! In the same subsector! Only the Emperor's Will could have made it so. He told her how he had never stopped thinking about her and always wondered how she was doing.

Mericca Ann dried her tears as she told him of Ironfig. How it had slowly lost all its trade over the years and that no one really ever came down this way anymore. It was getting too dangerous too, what with the Black Spawn and all the racitors, and the other bad things that came around. Now it was just her, Rollam and the kids. She told him their parents old hab was still standing, but only just, and demanded he come back for supper and stay for the night.

'That sounds a whole lot better than sleeping out here,' he told her, unable to stop himself from grinning. 'You cook now?'

She slapped his arm and led him back to the old family home in the silvery blue light of the mainworld. But as they walked arm in arm Greon realised there was something odd about Mericca Ann. Something that troubled him. Something other than the years lost between them, or how she seemed so thin and malnourished.

That feeling escalated to a darkly unsettling aspect when Merrica Ann introduced him to her husband.


	5. FIVE

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..5..**

ROLLAM GRELLIS WAS A HUGE MAN. He towered over Greon Reacchus, and Greon was not short by any standard. The man could have been mistaken for half-Ogryn if not for his more human aspects. The height and width and countenance of his sister's husband was intimidating to say the least, and dubious of origin to say a little more.

'Been cuttin' wood,' the huge man rumbled, hefting a forester's axe over one tire-sized shoulder. 'Those swooner saplings can take it out of you. Like trying to cut through iron cabling. Name's Rolly.'

'Nice to meet you,' Greon said, though he did not feel the least bit of the sentiment. His sister's husband had about as much charm as a sack full of smashed mudscuttlers.

When he shook Rollam Grellis's hand it was like putting his fist inside a bucket of rocks, waiting to be crushed. It reminded Greon of the men of his childhood. Strong men with fierce faces and fierce handshakes, spitting their zerrafam tabac juice at each other's feet and trading endless trapper stories over cups of rotgut and mushroom wine. Except Greon was full grown now and grizzled and had long forgotten how hard a bigger man's handshake could be. Until now. But it was not just his brother-in-law's daunting size or granite grip that was intimidating. It was in other less discernible aspects of his countenance. Such as the peculiar shape of his head, slightly misshapen and elongated at the back, the oddly coloured eyes. There was something not right about them. Greon found himself leaning forward, against his better judgement and good manners, to get a better look at the man.

Those eyes were not the eyes of any ordinary man from over Whistle Stilt way. They were like no eyes he had ever seen. It was possible it was just some odd genetic anomaly. Such mutations occurred at random across the Belt. But it made Greon wonder what his sister saw in the man. The giant fellow had been hit by the ugly stick on more than one occasion. Truth be told, Rollam Grellis had been beaten near to death with it.

Greon cringed at the thought of meeting his sister's children. He prayed they took after their mother.

'How long's he staying?' Rollam asked. Those unfamiliar eyes never once left Greon's face.

Greon's blood boiled at the brazen remark. His fists clenched and he glared furiously at his sister's husband, not even knowing why he was so defensive all of a sudden, but Rollam Grellis did not take any notice. He looked down on Greon as though he were some strange fish he had just caught at the end of his harpoon. Merrica Ann cut in between them, smiling warmly and ushered her brother across to the dining table.

'He's not staying all that long, Rolly. Just for the night, is all. Try to be a little more mannerly, please, he's my brother. His scoot conked out on him half way here. He's lucky he even got here in one piece.'

Rollam's jagged eyebrows arched up at that. 'Almost got stuck out after dark did you? That would have tested the nerve a bit. But a few hungry racitors shouldn't bother a trained Imperial Guardsman like yourself, should they? Don't they teach you to deal with all kinds of threat in the Guard?' When Greon only shrugged in reply, Rollam sniffed. 'S'pose we can have him over for a night.'

'Rather obliged if you did,' Greon said, more brusquely than he intended.

Those eyes were not right in the least. There was nothing going on in there. The lights were on but the lab was empty. Nothing but cold, calculative analysis. Like racitors' eyes. Bluer than any blue he had ever seen, almost electric. And with such a strange shape to the pupil. As though each pupil had little triangles cut out of it.

Greon put the entire experience down to his dog-tiredness and skewed expectations. Who was he to judge who his sister married? What honest man ever liked his brother-in-law on first impression anyway? Surely this was just a natural response between two strangers from very different places? Men always sized each other up. It was just that Greon was not so used to being the smaller man.


	6. SIX

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..6..**

THEY ATE SUPPER AS NIGHT FELL over the bayou. Big rumps of racitor meat grilled on the flame, caramelized in brown sugar and weed broth, with a side of apple-beet mash and greens.

Greon was too tired to talk. Rollam was content to just stare at the tabletop and Mericca Ann was as silent as a ghost as she cooked and served their meal. She had been such a loud mouth kid. All lip, never enough time to talk about everything. But now, twelve years later, married to this man, she was as unobtrusive as a mouse.

She had never wanted to marry. With both feet planted permanently in the mud and her hair all over the place she had been a wild creature. 'I'd rather marry a racitor than some stinky man!' she had once said to their father after he had suggested to meet up with a young scoot driver who had punted all the way over from a nearby mudhold. Greon guessed that's what happened to people when they spent years apart. They changed.

It was Rollam, however, who broke the silence with his rumbling voice. 'So, tell us?' he asked, shovelling huge mouthfuls of racitor steak down his gullet as though he were stoking a coal burner, racing to be somewhere.'What action did you see out there in the Belt? Anything of merit? Anything worthy of a story or two?'

 _Clickety-schtlick-clickety-schtlick_ went those teeth between those calloused lips, and down went another fist full of meat and apple-beet mash.

Greon feigned a smile. 'Ashamed to admit it, Rollam, but not all that much to speak of. More hurry up and wait than anything else. There were plenty of other regiments out there who saw action. They had stories to share. Not much I could share around the dinner table mind. A lot of men killed in those regiments. Mine just lucked out I guess. Or lucked in - depending on how you want to look at it. A few exchanges with pirates is all, really. We almost had a run in with the Ork but the Space Marines got there before us and took away all our fun.'

Rollam just nodded and chewed his meal with a jaw that looked as though it could crush bones like soft candy.

Outside, the beseecher beetles chirped in the clammy darkness. Their high-pitched quartets mingled with the deep, rattling whoops of female racitors pining for a mate.

'Where in the wild wet ways did you get that there scoot from?' Rollam nudged his chin toward the front door and pushed his empty plate away.

Greon was only half way through his own meal and still had a voracious appetite. He guessed big men had big appetites, but bigger men had bigger ones. He told Rollam and his sister the story about the cheap motor launch he'd hired in Old Town and how it had broken down and left him stranded. 'It was the Emperor's Blessing really I found that old scoot at all. About twenty klicks back. If I hadn't found it I might not have lived through the night I reckon!'

Rollam nodded, accepting a proffered cup of lo-caff from Mericca Ann. She had cleared away his plate. She handed a second cup to her brother and Greon frowned at the awkward tremor in her long fingers. He tried to catch his sister's eyes but she kept them on the floor as she went back to the kitchen.

'I'm thinking our boys have that exact same scoot,' Rollam said. Those strange, blue eyes burned las-bolt rounds straight through the Imperial Guardsman. 'The exact same one.'

Greon looked to his sister and then back to Rollam. A surge of mortification shot through him as realization dawned. ' _Oh_ _no_! You don't think it was _their_ scoot I took, do you? I didn't mean to steal it from anyone. It looked like it had been laying there for decades.'

He stood then to make his way towards the racitor gun leaned up against the wall by the front door, but Rollam gestured for him to stay seated. The huge man shrugged his shoulders, his face as composed and unmoving as a sheet of ice.

'No problem in it,' he said. 'My boys can handle themselves. They're bred from good old El Arboran stock.' The last statement was pointed sharply at Greon.

'I don't recall any El Arboran wandering the swamps of a night and getting home with a peachy smile on his face,' Greon replied. 'Especially a kid.'

Rollam grinned at that and blew the heat off the top of his lo-caff. 'Oh, ours'll be just fine. Don't you worry yourself over it.'

Greon shook his head in horror. He had no right to tell his sister and her husband how to bring up their kids, but most folks out here wouldn't need much telling. Such measures were common sense in these parts. No one went out at night unless their life depended on it.

Greon pulled his eyes away from his brother-in-law's peculiar gaze and glanced around the old hab. He searched for something to break the tension, anything to change the topic, something else to say.

When he sipped his lo-caff it went down too well after the hot meal. With the heat from the crackling wood fire the old hab almost felt like home again. Almost.

'You're not worried about your boys being out so late?' This he turned to his sister, unable to drop the subject.

Mericca Ann flashed him an angry look from the kitchen. A look that could have curdled the steak in his belly.

'It's a good thing to see an Uncle concerned for his nephews,' Rollam said.

He stood up to his full height and let out a tremendous belch. The sound almost rattled the blinds against the windows.

'My boys know how to handle themselves, Reacchus. Don't go tormenting yourself too much. They might seem young by your standards but I've trained them well enough to handle almost anything this swamp could throw at them. Maybe anything in the Imperium for that matter.' And with that odd and final remark he sniffed and gave Greon a curt nod. 'Well, it's time for me to hit the reeds, so to speak.'

Greon shook that granite grip again and watched Rollam trudge down the hallway to the main bedroom that had once belonged to his parents. Greon decided it was well and due time to have a nice and long, in-depth, brother-to-sister catch up with Mericca Ann. He could even smuggle her out in the scoot the next morning if he could get her to her senses, maybe take the kids too. But before the guardsman could strike up conversation with his sibling he was hit with such an unexpected drowsiness that he thought he might collapse right there and then in the dining room.

Hitting the reeds suddenly sounded like the best idea in the world.

Greon put his sluggishness down to a long and arduous day, wading through mud with his nerves stretched so thin his heart might have given out long before a racitor had got to him. Maybe he _had_ picked up a bug or something, even with the immunity shots the medicae had given him.

Excusing himself for his delirious state Greon followed his sister to his old room. She had set up a small, comfortable cot in there for him, with blankets and a mudfly net to protect him throughout the night from the nagging biters.

As soon as they got inside the room Greon clutched his sister's arm. He flinched as she savagely pulled it away. She was stronger than she looked.

'Are you alright, Mericca Ann?' he whispered. 'Are you safe here?'

Merri glared at him and shook her head, pushing a dark strand of hair back behind her ear. 'I'm more than fine here. And don't you grab me like that again, Greon Makarly Reacchus. Now go to sleep. You're weary and being foolish. We can talk in the morning.'

He collapsed back onto the soft bedding before she even got the door closed. He was still in his damp clothes. He should have taken a bath before he got into bed, it was poorly mannered of him, but none of that mattered right now. Sleep came fast.

From the window of his old room the gaurdsman could hear the rattle and whoop of the racitors, the thunderous splash of their long bodies as they slipped beneath the mud, the lulling _thtick-thtick-thitck_ of their low-frequency clicking.

Then, just before the dark shroud of slumber stole over him, he heard voices in the bayou. Voices of what sounded like children. But these spoke in a strange tongue. Could they be his sister's kids? He hoped not. The words were all wrong and garbled. They sounded too strange, too awful. One of them laughed and the sound was just like that of the racitors hunting their prey.

But before Greon could summon the will power to comprehend any of it, sleep took him to a much quieter and safer place than here.


	7. SEVEN

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..7..**

GREON AWOKE TO AN ARGUMENT. The sound sent slivers of pain shooting through his woolly head.

For a moment he thought he was back at the Astra Militarum barracks with his squad mates Tuckman and Heritino squabbling over a game of Seven Hand Sam like they always did. Tuckman was always cheating, and Heritino was more than happy to always beat him up for it. But as Greon's mind slowly ascended through the layers of fog and out of a much too deep sleep he realised it was not his squad mates bickering next to him at all, but his sister and her strange husband, screeching at one another at the top of their lungs, right there in the room with him.

Weren't they worried about waking him the hell up? They were really going at it too.

Awkwardly, perhaps because he was embarrassed for them, or perhaps because his head simply ached too much, the guardsman chose to keep his eyes shut and his breathing regular. Maybe they'd blow out all their frustrations and leave the room and let him sleep a little longer.

'I'll do it before the boys get back, before it wears off!' Rollam's voice thundered. 'We need him fresh.'

'He should've been asleep before he left the table!' Mericca Ann snapped right back. She reminded Greon of the younger fiery sister of his childhood. No more timidity here. All fire and not a care in the world for how far she went. 'He should've dropped off much faster than that, Rollam Grellis. He was still awake when I put him down to bed!'

There was something in her tone that made Greon's blood run colder and colder.

'Did you give him the same amount as the others?'

'Of course I did. And a bit more to boot, just to make sure he stayed out. But he took it all down like it was nothing more than a double-shot of rot gut!'

'He's Imperial Guard, Mericca. There's some tough men in those regiments, believe you me. But don't upset yourself. It's all fine now, sweet skin. It's all right and good now. He's out deeper than a mudfeeder at the bottom of the bayou.'

Greon could hear Rollam rubbing his sister's arms with his thick, calloused hands. Mericca Ann made a moaning sound. Then he heard a wet sucking noise that almost made him pop his eyes open.

They were kissing! As shameless and ravenous as a pair of teenagers, right there in the room with him. They couldn't get enough of each other. Then came the rushed gasps of breath, the soft slip of fabric falling from skin.

Greon kept his eyes shut, his breathing regular. He was confused. And worse than all the awkwardness of such a humiliating predicament he was as hung-over as he had ever been. What had they been screeching about? His head was all muddled up, too thick with fog and confusion. Had his sister put something in his drink, or in his food? Had Mericca Ann poisoned him? Could she have fallen so low in twelve years as to dope her own brother, her own blood?

He had come home, all this way, like he had promised, to give her the money she would need to get off this rock, and now Mericca Ann had drugged him. For what?

Greon was tremendously grateful for the mule-kick multi-vaccinations the medicae had shot into his arm back at the barracks. Whatever toxin his sister had administered had been neutralized by those shots. Hence his head feeling like it had been run over by a convoy of Rhinos instead of feeling nothing at all, and him being awake as opposed to unconscious. Or maybe even dead?

The intimate activity suddenly stopped. Greon heard the slap of a small hand across a hard cheek.

'The Father will be outraged!' his sister shrieked at her husband.

What in the Warp was she talking about? Their father had been dead for years.

'Well, I want the boys to have him,' Rollam roared. 'He'll be good sustenance. The Father will just have to wait for another to come along.'

'But He might want Greon for _Himself_!' Mericca Ann wailed. 'He's a strong man, Rolly. The Father could put him to good use. We could bring him into the fold. He would make a good soldier, maybe even a protector for the kids.'

Greon's blood rinsed icicles through his system. A little of it came from the vaccinations fighting the good fight against the toxin he had ingested, the rest was just ice-cold terror.

Had he heard her correctly? It made no sense at all, though it had certainly got his attention.

He remembered horror stories from veterans in the Imperial Guard, sharing their knowledge with the younger recruits during long periods on watch. Stories about people with strange hypnotic eyes and cults being formed upon the Eastern Fringes. Terrible creatures that used human beings, and indeed entire worlds, for their own needs. Like puppet masters. What had they been called? Who had told him that story? There was one story in particular desperately clawing its way up into his memory.

'The boys will be here soon, Mericca Ann. Let's get this over and done with. Quit arguing with me on this!'

He heard his sister grunt in resignation. 'He's my brother, Rolly. My blood. I don't want my family's blood on my hands.' She sniffed back tears. Was there anything left of his sister in this strange, young woman?

He heard her let out a slow, sad sigh. It sounded as though their disagreement was over. 'You're going to have to do it yourself, Rollam Grellis. I won't take part in it. And you better pray The Father is thinkin' the same way you are.'

Then the bedroom door crashed shut.

All he could hear now was the sound of his sister's husband breathing heavily. Rollam Grellis was very close. He sounded like a racitor bull that had heaved itself ponderously up onto land, the most unnatural place for it to dwell.

Mericca Ann had left him alone with her husband. Greon's mind was chasing after a memory. A much needed memory. Blood on her hands? What in the Void had she been talking about? Had they all gone mad out here from lack of contact with the outside world? Why would two isolated El Arborans need to drug someone and then just kill them? And who was this 'Father' fellow anyway?

He heard the unmistakable scrape of wood sliding inside calloused hands. Two heavy steps and Rollam Grellis was right there alongside the bed. A bolt of adrenalin shot through Greon's system.

Twelve years of Guard training kicked in before any more questions about his uncomfortable and unfathomable circumstances could arise. He opened his eyes just in time to see doom descending upon him.

His brother-in-law loomed over him like a roiling thunderhead, the huge forester's axe raised high above his head. The arc of its descent would pass straight through Greon's neck.

By the flexion in the huge man's triceps and the fierce expression on his face he was not about to tickle the recumbent Guardsman with the hefty blade either. No, Rollam Grellis was very serious about not sharing his brother-in-law with The Father.

Corporal Greon Reacches, of the 167th Bremian Armoured Cavalry, was about to get his head cut clean off by his sweet sister's very tall, very ugly, homicidally deranged husband.


	8. EIGHT

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..8..**

GREON SPUN TO ONE SIDE. The blade of the big forester's axe cut right through the padded material of the mattress where his head had been, down to the hard wood of the frame.

Rollam Grellis gaped in disbelief. Greon swivelled atop the bed and lashed out as hard as he could. His right foot connected with the centre of Rollam's barrel-like chest and sent the man tottering back across the room into the far wall. There was a loud crack as the wood behind the man gave out a little.

'You're awake?' Rollam wheezed, struggling to gasp in air.

Greon answered him by charging across the room, putting all his weight into the attack. A small bear charging into a much larger beast.

This time his shoulder took all the huge man's breath away. Rollam almost lost his grip on the axe. A smaller man's ribs would have shattered under such force but Rollam was made of sturdier stuff.

He caught Greon up by the throat with his free hand. That powerful granite fist squeezed it like a chicken neck. Greon's eyes bugged out. Black and silver stars flashed across his vision.

The axe came up again, one-handed this time. Rollam's peculiar eyes turned feral and in that moment Greon caught a glimpse of something in them he hoped to never see again in all his life.

 _Emperor's Mercy_ , he thought. He finally remembered the story!

It was the one he had heard long ago from an old guardsman he had spent long hours with on watch, overseeing the Curuccas Reach. Old Mack had seen a lifetime of horrors in his forty years fighting for the Emperor. But there was one battle that scarred the old guardsman more bitterly than any of the others. The Fall of Iroc. A small village turned aloof, its citizens disappeared or gone feral month after month until all the other villages nearby had evacuated. The Imperial Guard were called in, along with a contingent of the Adeptus Astartes, to cleanse the region of the vile creatures that had wheedled their way into that pitiable and dreadful place. Old Mack called them the Puppet Masters. They were just the vanguard of a vast and terrible legion of monsters come to devour the world and its entire system. But there was one other appellation old Mack had used to give precise credence to that deadly alien foe. Greon recalled it now as he stared up into Rollam's snarling face: the Tyranid!

Those electric blue eyes had folded back beneath their lids to reveal two liquid black lenses that were not from this world. Rollam Grellis was not just a mildly mutated freak of nature. In that moment there was little of anything human in him at all.

Greon swung both arms up and broke the grip on his throat. He caught hold of the huge wrist that held the axe above him and sucked in lungfuls of Emperor Blessed oxygen.

As a younger man he would never have won a fight like this, not against a man who outweighed him so much. But Greon Reacchus had learnt a lot in twelve years with the Imperial Guard. One such lesson was that any man had as much weakness as another. And the bigger a man was the bigger he could fall. The guardsman just hoped there was still enough man left inside this creature to feel it.

His knee shot up between his brother-in-law's legs, fast and rigid. There was a nasty thud, a rip of material, and Rollam's alien eyes boggled outward in agony. His face went red as an applebeet. Spittle flew as he roared out his pain.

Greon noticed the pointed teeth then. Twin sets, another row behind the first, like some ghoulish fish. No wonder Rollam had not bothered to smile at him during introductions, or over supper. The teeth would have given him away immediately.

Rollam threw a punch. Nothing precise. A rudimentary haymaker, thrown in agonised rage, that would have likely taken Greon's head off if he had was not so well trained. He ducked beneath the blow. As Rollam's fist kissed the air above his head Greon bobbed back up and threw a sharp elbow with all the power from his rear foot. The blow cracked open Rollam's brow and sent his head bouncing off the wall. His alien eyes boggled like a stunned fish. Before the huge man could regain his senses Greon cracked him again, this time across the jaw with his prized left hook. The alien eyes rolled back into the man's s head and his legs buckled out beneath him.

The giant slumped to the floor like a dropped rag doll. Greon snatched away the axe. He let out a gasp of relief. Job well done, he thought. He considered planting the blade of the axe deep inside his brother-in-law's mutated skull but a flurry of movement caught in his periphery.

A frail figure stood in the doorway. As he turned to face it Greon froze in horror. His heart hammered hard enough to jump out his chest and swim off through the racitor infested marshlands all on its own. He gaped in hopelessness.

Mericca Ann stood before him, trembling like a flower caught in a gale. The racitor gun looked obscene in her long, skinny arms. It was tucked beneath her chin and up against her bony shoulder. The wide trumpet mouth of the ancient musket stared at him ominously, sealing his fate and likely everything else in the room behind him – Rollam Grellis included.

Mericca Ann's eyes were cold and resolute. Though flushed with tears and more human than her husband's they nevertheless meant business. Cold blooded, heart-breaking business.


	9. NINE

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..9..**

GREON'S FINGERS RELEASED their grip on the axe. The hefty blade crashed to the floorboards, its handle slamming against the side of Rollam Grellis's head with an unceremonious crunch. The unconscious man remained oblivious.

Greon raised his empty hands in the air. 'I came back for you, Merrica Ann. Just like I promised. I came back to take you away from all this.'

Mericca Ann's red-rimmed eyes glared at him through the sighting hoop of the racitor gun. The long barrelled weapon wavered in her trembling grip, drooping down before she had to lift it up and level it on her brother again. 'That was a long time ago, Gree. A lot's gone on since then. You shouldn't have come back.'

Greon could not have agreed more. He nodded, imploring his sister with his eyes, with everything he had left in him, everything their shared history together might offer to extend him just a smattering of compassion or empathy. But whatever it was they had once shared was wiped out long ago. She looked so small and fragile there in the doorway. This was not the sister he knew. Something had changed inside her, made her this sick and wasted skeleton. He wanted nothing more than to pick her up and drag her away from all this, but there was not much a man could do staring down the barrel of a racitor gun.

'Well, I'll just go then,' he said. 'Okay, Merri? I don't belong here. Put that gun down and let me go. I'm not here to hurt you or your family. I only came back because I'm a man of my word. I came back because I said I would. I thought that might mean something to you.'

Tears poured down Merrica Ann's cheeks. She sniffed them back and sobbed. The gaping hexagonal barrel of the racitor gun wavered up and down, up and down. 'The Father needs men like you,' she said, swallowing her tears. 'He breathes through your veins, He speaks without words. It's beautiful when you finally get to hear his song, Gree. His will must be done by our unworthy human hands. He's not strong enough just yet to let anyone go. But with a little bit of time and with our help he's going to be all powerful, Gree. Like nothing you've ever seen. He could use a strong man like you. You can't just leave. I won't let you go and ruin everything he's built for us here.'

Greon swallowed. The muscles in his throat clicked it was so dry. This was worse than a life-threatening situation. This was life-threatening on a galactic scale.

'Merri, please.' he said to her softly. 'Give your old mud-and-blood brother one last gift. After all, I came all this way to give you a chance to get offworld, didn't I? Like you always wanted to? Remember all those places you said you wanted to go and see? I thought you still wanted all that. But I can see that's not the case now. I can see you want to stay here. And that's okay, Merri. That's more than okay. I'm happy for you. And I'm not sure who this Father guy is you keep telling me about, but you and he, you can have all the money I've got on me if you want it. All of it. It's in the pocket-seal of that muck suit there on the floor. It's all yours. You and this Father guy can keep it. It's all yours, Merri. Just let me go.'

'I'm sorry, Gree. I really am. He won't let you leave here alive. He just won't.'

'Listen to me, Mericca Ann. Listen to your brother. It won't matter if I go. You don't have to tell him about it. I won't say nothing to nobody. I'll just take the next transport shuttle out of El Arbora and be done with it. I'll go back to the Guard and forget all this happened. I won't come back. I won't bother you ever again, Merri. I promise!'

She squinted one eye closed. Greon's heart froze.

'I'm so sorry, Gree.' She said. She was wound up so tight there was not a chance in the world she was not going to do it.

A beam of light cut through the bedroom window. No less a blessing than the Emperor Himself knocking on the front door, it shivered and bounced over the dusted glass. Then a familiar old voice called from the darkness. 'Say, is anyone awake in there? Hello? I saw your light on!'

The distraction drew Mericca Ann's aim away from her brother. It wasn't much, but it was enough to decide Greon on what to do. He launched himself across the room, dropping down behind the marginal protection of a hardwood ironfig bureau.

The racitor gun bellowed like a Battle Cannon. Fire lit the room and devoured the swampfly netting over the bed in one gulp. The mattress evaporated in a cloud of tumblewings. The entire back wall and window blew out into a plume of woodchips. Somehow the entire atomizing blast missed Rollam's unconscious body altogether.

'Emperor's Wrath!' the voice outside howled. 'What in the Warp-ridden-fancies are you kids playin' at in there?'

Night lay stark against the gaping, jagged hole in the bedroom wall. Smoke filled the room from the detonated cartridge, eerily backlit by the lamp above the door. Choking fumes filled the confines. Racitor guns were purpose built for the outside world where thousands of square kilometres of marshland could swallow up the sound of the shot and all the dank humid air could filter the detonation gas.

Greon crawled out from behind the bureau, gasping and blinking, working his jaw against the bright ringing in his ears. He was alive and safe! For the moment at least.

His sister lay sprawled beneath the racitor gun as though she had been felled by a tree branch. She was unconscious. The musket had broken her shoulder and flung her out into the hallway like a toy. She would not be reloading it or firing it anytime soon.

Greon groped his way toward her and snatched up the weapon. The light beam returned now and shivered tentatively over the gaping hole in the wall.

The guardsman began the tedious priming and charging process for the ancient musket. Whoever was outside might not have taken kindly to being shot at, and Greon had no ambition to be the target practice for any more locals today.

A glowing red occulus peeked through the hole in the wall. It hovered in the gloom like the ghost light of a will-o'-wisp. It sat where the right eye should have been in the withered face of an old man in a long, brown cloak. Greon could see a hefty calibred autopistol in the old man's outstretched hand. A flashlight in the other. Though he looked more terrified than murderous, the old man was aiming the pistol in Greon's direction. As soon as he recognized the Imperial Guardsman he lowered the pistol and spat a long stream of zerrafam tabac juice across the floor.

'By the Sweat Upon the Holy Throne! It looks like I turned up just in the nick of time wouldn't you say, Guard Boy?' Chagwin Mullbar let out a whoop of laughter. His teeth were as black as the mud in the bayou. To Greon Reacchus he was nothing short of a visitation from the Emperor's Divine Light.

Greon was shaking so badly he thought he might split into pieces. He was trembling more than the old man was and he was a trained soldier. At least the job of pushing the powder and cartridge back down the length of the racitor gun's barrel with the ramrod made him feel a little more in control of things.

'Your gun works a whole lot better than that damn motor launch you leased me,' he yelled over the ringing in his ears. 'You owe me money, old man.'

'We can sort that out later,' Chagwin replied. 'Now, mind tellin' an old mudhop vendor what you're doin' in the one place he told you to not go in the first place before you got there?'

Greon shrugged. 'I had some loose ends to tie up.'

The mudhop appraised the jagged edges of the wall he had stepped through. He let out a long, low whistle. 'Your loose ends are pretty damn loose, Guard Boy. Are you alright?' he holstered the autopistol on his hip.

Greon shrugged. 'My sister and her husband just tried to kill me. How's your evening been?'

Chagwin shook his head at all the mess. 'I came down here as fast as a zipjay when old Roddy Mullig told me about the bad motor he'd put into that launch before he sold it to me. I should've known he'd do some damned fool thing like that. I forgot to check the filters before you took off. You were in such a rush. That's why I came out all this way. Almost thought you'd bought it in the swamp and was rottin' away inside some racitor's belly.' He looked over the bodies on the floor. 'They dead?'

Greon shook his head. 'No. But they wanted _me_ dead. Do you know anything about some guy called 'The Father'? My sister keeps talkin' about him.'

Chagwin hissed at him. He made a superstitious circle with his thumb and forefinger above his head and pointed at Greon. It was as though Greon had just spoken the names of all the darkest devils and demons roving the galaxy. The old man's occulus glinted in the dim light of the room. 'Keep your trap shut, boy! Do not speak of it again, or even think of it. I can't tell you everything right away, but I got a skimmer waiting on us out here. We best get going now before he comes for a visit.'

Greon looked up at the old man then. 'Before _who_ comes for a visit?'

'The thing you're talking about. You don't want to be here to find out what it is, believe me. I was assigned to Old Town five years ago when we first heard the rumours. I was startin' to think they weren't true but the last few months stirred up a worry in me I just couldn't put away. And now this!' he nudged the unconscious form of Rollam Grellis whose gaping mouth displayed those double rows of needle sharp teeth. 'Every single one of our fears has come true.'

'Every single one of whose fears?' Greon was confused. He needed water. He needed a long sleep somewhere far away from all this. Preferably on the main world, or somewhere far off on the other side of the Belt.

'The Inquisition, boy. That's who.'

Greon's blood ran cold. He didn't need any further information from the man, nor did he want it. The Inquisition were the most feared policing agency in the Imperium. Their myth and legend, their mysterious presence in all facets of Imperial life, commanded dread within the heart of every good guardsman - though to openly fear or hate them was heresy itself. The fact that the Inquisition was afraid of anything was bad enough. The fact that they were afraid of what was going on here in his old hometown of Ironfig was enough to plunge the guardsman's condition down to the very bowels of soul horror.

Greon slung the loaded racitor gun over one shoulder and hoisted his limp sister over the other. He was groggy from the poisoning, and his head was still ringing from the musket's blast, but he was desperate to be away from here. Ironfig Hold was no home to him. It was marked by the Holy Inquisition. It was an abomination.

He shot a wary glance at Rollam but the giant was out cold. The bastard mutant could rot for all Greon cared. He did not wish to look into those xenos-spawn eyes ever again. His sister, however, was another matter. Damn him for an Emperor Forsaken oversentimental idiot. What mad hideous mess had his promise dumped him into?

An inhuman howl of rage pierced the night.

The shriek echoed over the bayou for kilometres. It was followed by the thrashing of foliage, as though a huge crowd of people were racing through the undergrowth. Greon doubted it was a search party come to save him.

'We best get going if we wish to see another morning,' Chagwin said. The old man turned and ran before the guardsman could reply.

Greon heaved his sister a little higher on his shoulder and followed the old mudhop out into the black night. The Inquisition was here. He had a bad feeling they were about to get a real close look at what Rollam Grellis and his sister had sired together and brought into the world. The idea made him run a whole lot quicker.


	10. TEN

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..10..**

THEY FLED INTO THE NIGHT.

The agri-moon had drifted fully into the shadow of its mainworld, plunging the El Arboran Delta into an impenetrable night. If not for the mudhop vendor's electric lantern, bobbing like some monstrous yellow glowfly ahead of him, Greon would not have been able to pick out the details of the hand in front of his face. As it was the golden light slipped and shunted away with every step, creating jagged bright triangles across the black void.

Keening howls erupted from the darkness. They were like nothing Greon had ever heard upon the El Arboran Delta. The sounds reminded him of Rollam's terrible, unnatural eyes. The jungle thrashed and cracked as though an army of jungle fighters were chopping their way through it. The beseecher beetles were startled silent, as were the racitors who had paused in their mating rituals to observe what was rampaging across their flooded realm.

Greon's sister moaned and pushed weakly against his shoulder. He held her as tightly as he could to keep pace with the fleet-footed old man ahead of him.

Chagwin's marsh skimmer was tied up next to Greon's scoot. The vessel was seven meters long with three elevated bench seats along its foredeck and a huge propeller turbine in the aft. The armoured steel decking and outer plating made the willowy old scoot next to it look like a treacherous plaything for blind fools, which Greon supposed he had been. Nevertheless he would take the primitive old scoot over wading and swimming through these dangerous waters any time of day or night. He was just grateful they had a modern day transport to get them back to Old Town.

Chagwin jumped aboard the skimmer. The old mudhop vendor immediately set about tugging at the starter cord to get the prop-blades going as Greon boarded behind him and laid Mericca Ann down upon one of the bench seats.

The engine made a sick, metallic rattle. The huge prop-blades remained motionless and silent inside their cage.

'Is every boat of yours a dud?' Greon rumbled, levelling the racitor gun upon the calamitous darkness.

The old man scowled at him and heaved upon the starter motor again and again. Each desperate attempt made his movements almost comic to look upon. He kicked at the cage housing the huge turbine and snarled into the night.

'Emperor be damned with you!' the old man spat. 'Start you cursed thing! Do you need a Tech-priest's sanctified seal of functioning?! Start you rusted old mudhag!'

It was then that Mericca Ann screamed aloud in her cataleptic state. Only the whites of her eyes showed as her fingers grasped the air before her.

'Oh Great Father!' she shrieked. 'This trespass cannot be excused! Come to us! Come to us and feed. _Feed_ , for we have failed you!'

Greon slapped her. Hard. He would have slapped her again but she had lapsed back into unconsciousness. Then the turbine motor sputtered into life. The prop-blades roared. A great gust of wind blew out across the boardwalk behind them. Dried leaves shot up into the air, caught between dual tornadoes.

'That's my girl!' Chagwin clapped his hands together in his elation.

A coil of rope landed on Greon's shoulder. Chagwin pointed at the rope, steering the skimmer down the watery boulevard. He had to shout over the bellow of wind and machine. 'Might be a wise thing to tie your sister down, Guard Boy. Good and proper like. Gag her too. For her own good, as well as ours. We don't need her bringing that xenos-spawn down upon us.'

Greon nodded and took up the rope with grim determination. The old man belonged to the Inquisition. He knew more about these sorts of things than anyone. He bent over his sister and bound her wrists and ankles together, wincing as she moaned against the pain of her bonds. Out in the darkness the things howled even louder as the marsh skimmer roared away from Ironfig out into the bayou.

'Bad time to be travellin',' Chagwin noted, shaking his grizzled old head. He spat out over the gunwale.

'I don't see we have a whole lot of choice,' Greon replied.

'Dead if you do,' the old man said. 'Eternally damned if you don't.'

Something huge splashed and slid into the waters behind them. The Guardsman levelled the racitor gun at the deep wall of night, certain something was about to come rushing down upon them any moment.

Eventually the howls and splashes drifted further and further away, dwindling into the void, until there was nothing but the throaty roar of the turbine and the hiss of water beneath the keel. After what felt like hours Greon let the ancient hunting musket rest atop his lap and let out a long, weary sigh. His sister's moans had stopped, as if whatever she had been praying to no longer had use of her. She was limp and lifeless. Gagged and bound. She could have been dead.

Greon stared at her uneasily. Had he made the right choice bringing her with him? Could she ever return to the Mericca Ann he had once remembered?

At least they were alive and safe for the time being. That was all that mattered right now. They were alive and safe. The Inquisition had it all under control. That was what the Inquisition was for. To keep the Imperium safe from the perils within it. Chagwin Mulbar had saved their lives and everything was going to be okay.

It was just that whenever Greon looked over his shoulder up at the old man standing by the rudder-wheel, Chagwin's face looked hollowed and drawn. It was not the face of Righteous sanctified self-assurance. The old mudhop vendor looked about as frightened as the guardsman was. It was enough to force Greon to turn back and keep his eyes on the cloying darkness playing at the edges of the electric lantern's light. He lifted the racitor gun up again and peered through its sighting hoop.

Three or four hours. That was all they needed to get back to Old Town and the relative safety of the near civilized world. Just three or four hours and everything would be okay.

Beads of sweat scratched down Greon's forehead and into his eyes. The salt burned his vision and he prayed and prayed and prayed.


	11. ELEVEN

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..11..**

THE MARSH SKIMMER PUTTERED and popped across the dark expanse of marshland, outrageously loud in the endless black quiet. Only the beseecher beetles dared to counteract its mechanical clamour with their insistent chirruping, like a million rubber soled boots squeaking on a newly polished floor.

A good two hours had passed since they had fled Ironfig Hold. Without the noise of the howling creatures behind them it almost felt like an ordinary evening skimming down the bayou. Just one more hour and they would be docking alongside the narrow jetties of Old Town, home safe. Greon checked on his sister a number of times but she was out cold. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes rolled sluggishly beneath their lids. Behind him Chagwin Mulbar peered resolutely into the inky darkness. The old mudhop vendor swung the marsh skimmer around floating logs and submerged islets, squinting against the tiny biters that flew into his face before being sucked into oblivion inside the turbine behind him. He had eased the vessel off its breakneck pace and the roar of the prop-blades was almost tolerable.

'Those things back there,' Greon asked, testing the word out before using it. ' _Tyranid_. They were the _Tyranid_ , weren't they?'

Chagwin Mulbar nodded. 'Makes your skin crawl, don't it? Thinkin' about such things. Knowin' things like that are real, scuttlin' about upon the same world as you.' He leaned over and spat another line of goop out over the gunwale. 'When Inquisitor Tosk assigned me to Old Town all we could go on those first few years were whispers and rumour. People were fleeing Ironfig and other holds near it, babbling about monsters comin' up outta the mud. Some believed 'em, most just shook their heads. Then people started disappearing. Folk got real scared. All the signs were there. _Corporaptor hominis_ was what we feared the most. The genestealer. That's why Tosk assigned me to the mudhop stalls. To watch the faces of the locals coming and going. Worse thing a world could have hiding on it, a genestealer. Meshing its DNA with the local populace, turning them into its own xenos lovin' cult. Its happened before upon thousands of other worlds just like this one. Though _Corporaptor Primus_ is likely in the region also. That's the thing your sister calls 'The Father'. A Broodlord. Having one of those in your back yard is about as bad as it can get.'

'We have to tell the Imperial Guard,' Greon gasped. 'And the Inquisition will surely help. They have command of the Adeptus Astartes and the Imperial Navy, right?'

Chagwin laughed aloud and spat a long stream of zerrafam tabac juice out across the black water. 'It don't always work like they tell you in the stories, boy. The Inquisition is all seeing and all powerful, of course - and don't forget it - but we've as many problems as there are worlds in the Imperium. An Inquisitor needs proof positive before he can make his decision. He won't just take a man's word for it. Not yours, or mine.'

Greon stood up in shock. 'I was fighting the bastard with my own hands. I knocked it out. I saw its eyes roll back and they were black beneath. My sister's husband wasn't human! Its teeth! Surely you saw its _teeth_ , Chagwin?'

The old man sighed and ushered the guardsman back to his seat. 'I know, I know it. I saw it first hand just like you. Your sister's husband was an advanced strain of _Corporaptor hominis_ , likely second or third generation. But he's not here in the boat with us, is he? If I can get into contact with my master, Inquisitor Yuriel Tosk, you and your sister's personal account might just be enough to catch his attention. I know a Magos Biologis on the mainworld too who would be interested in your sister's... _ordeals..._ in isolation. A tech-priest's evaluation is guaranteed to speed up the process. But without a physical specimen to examine we don't stand a chance of bringing in the big guns like the Space Marines, or even the Guard. Not yet at least. And it's going to take time. We need to be patient. My last communiqué to Inquisitor Tosk took a year for him to reply.'

'It took him a year to answer a _call_?' Greon felt his heart plummet out beneath him.

He had hoped to bring salvation to his sister and their hometown, but now it looked as though salvation was little more than the teeniest filament of hope. 'I thought the Inquisition was all-powerful in its facility to act against the foe?'

Chagwin scowled. 'As I said, we're stretched thin, boy. Policing the galaxy is no easy feat. You try and do it some day. Inquisitor Tosk has his hands full already with several sectors already under threat - some by this very same fiend. But don't worry yourself now. If I go missing the Inquisition will know something's definitely up in El Arbora. It may take them a year or more to get boots on the ground but they will come.'

Greon swallowed a stiff knot of anguish and slowly shook his head. He leaned over and stroked his sister's hair, pushing her long, dark curls back from her face. All the money he had saved up over time was in the pocket-seal of the mucksuit he had left on the floor back in Ironfig. How was he going to get Mericca Ann offworld now? And with his short-leave ending in the next few days, who knew where the Departmento Munitorum would be shipping him off to next, or how long it would be before he saw Verdantis Minor and his sister again - if ever? There had to be some way to bring the rightful and powerful authorities necessary down upon this menace.

The marsh skimmer hit something big.

The collision was so fierce it sent the entire skimmer airborne, flinging its three hapless occupants high into the air like juggling pins - spinning in three separate directions.

The motor was cut to silence and the beseecher beetles won their war against its mechanical clamour. For a time it seemed the marshlands had returned to their natural, primal splendour.


	12. TWELVE

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..12..**

GREON REACCHUS HURTLED THROUGH the air. Spinning and pin-wheeling. Watching the dark world twirl and roll wildly around him, over him and under him, over him and under him. Then a shimmering black mirror appeared out of the murk and he crashed into it face first.

The black, oily water of the bayou was as soft as concrete. He skipped across its surface once, twice, and then sank. Swallowed whole beneath the gluey depths he scrabbled at the liquid realm around him as though he were fighting his way out from the belly of some great and terrible leviathan. It was in his nose, his mouth, his eyes.

All the breath had been ripped from him and was floating in crystalline clusters of bubbles far above his head. He could feel the weeds at the bottom of the bayou caressing his legs. Wrapping slowly about them with the gentlest of touches. The treacle black depths were impenetrable to the human eye.

He struck for the surface. Every cell in his body screamed for air. He had not even had time to contemplate 'Racitor Attack' until his head broke the surface and he saw the marsh skimmer's bent steel hull dangling from the bough of a low hanging swooner gum. He gasped in breath after desperate breath, struggling to keep afloat.

The electric lantern was still ablaze atop the marsh skimmer's mast, except now the mast was upside down and the lantern swung precariously from its end, casting jagged fractures of light throughout the flooded forest and across the bayou.

Chagwin and Greon's sister were nowhere in sight.

Greon treaded the thick, soupy marshwater. The idea that their skimmer had been upturned by one of the deadly native fauna of the El Arboran Delta struck Greon with such urgency, he felt his limbs freeze up with dread. But he was treading water, and freezing meant sinking. And sinking would take him back down into the realm of the racitors. His realm was up here with the air, and the trees, and the land - wherever that was. Everything had happened so quickly he had to bite his tongue to stop from calling out to see if anyone else was alive.

He was glad he did. Because in that moment he heard the most harrowing sound any El Arboran man, woman or child dreaded to hear in the water.

 _-THTICK-FTICK-THTICK-scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiii-THTICK!_

The deep throated low-frequency pulses of not one racitor bull but possibly as many as five. Prowling the depths beneath him. The sharp sonic shockwaves battered his flesh and bones. Bouncing off his body like the ricochet of small arms fire. He did not stand a chance unarmed against a single racitor let alone an entire pack of them. He closed his eyes, prepared to say goodbye to El Arbora and any chance of surviving another sweet breath. Then a ghastly scream ripped across the bayou.

Mericca Ann lay a short distance away from the overturned skimmer, upon the edges of the muddy bank. Her frail arms that Greon had bound so tightly behind her to keep her from escaping were now askew at awful, agonising angles. She was struggling to pull her legs out of the water but she could barely move her shattered body.

That unmistakable _THTICK-FTICK-THTICK_ from beneath Greon faded away as the racitor bulls went straight for the sounds of pain and thrashing legs, music to their ophidian ears. They were going to snatch his sister's feet up in their jaws and drag her down into the deep.

'Climb Merri!' Greon howled. He knew full well the sound of his voice would draw the creatures back to him. 'By the Throne, Mericca Ann, _CLIMB_!'

She must have heard him, because suddenly she was kicking at the water all the more harder and rocking her body back and forth to shuffle further up the muddy bank. But her bound hands had caught against the sharp roots of a swooner sapling. She tried to heave herself over it, contorting her already broken arms even further. Her feet splashed and thrashed across the murky surface.

Greon struck out hard across the water. He swam for all he was worth, doubting his chances but perhaps if he made enough of a commotion he might draw the racitors back around. The thought that Mericca Ann had tried to kill him only a couple of hours ago did not alter his resolve in the least. He loved his sister, and always had. He had made a promise. He did not believe that these current events in Ironfig had been her will. The creatures Chagwin Mulbar had told him about, things like Rollam Grellis, had changed her, addled her mind, and Greon hoped he might somehow still yet save his sister. Perhaps this would be his last chance to do so.

Chagwin appeared out of the swooping light of the electric lantern. The old man took hold of the guardsman's outflung arm and hauled him slipping and sliding up to safety.

Blood streamed from a deep cut above the old man's oculus. His leg looked broken. Greon took little notice as he hauled himself to his feet, smashing his way through the twisted and clutching undergrowth to get to his sister before it was too late.

'Climb, Merri, _faster_!'

'I _am_!' She shrieked, her voice thick with terror and pain. Emperor's Mercy, who knew how many injuries she had suffered in the collision.

Greon ducked beneath the marsh skimmer's swinging light. He leapt forward and sprawled in the mud next to his sister just as the first of the racitor bulls reared up from the water to devour her.

He caught her up in his arms and hauled back as hard as he could hearing ligaments tear and snap beneath his fingers. He did not care, nor did he loosen his grip. Mericca Ann howled at the black night and blood gushed from her broken nose.

With a mighty muscular krrr _tchOKK_! the racitor's jaws snapped shut just behind her tightly curled toes. Its trench knife teeth popped into perfect alignment around the circumference of its maw. The huge beast looked like it was grinning up at them.

It was a magnificent specimen too. A full grown adult male that had fed well, most likely the alpha of the brood. A broad lizard snout with a jaw wide enough to swallow Greon up to his shoulders. Most of its powerful six-meter body was beneath the surface. But Greon could tell by the thickness of its neck, a radius he would not be able to wrap his arms around, the true size of the monster.

After that first snap the bull racitor opened its jaws and shot forward again. Greon hauled Mericca Ann back screaming on top of him. Again the beast's mouth clunked shut just before it could catch hold of her kicking feet. Greon placed himself in front of his sister now, desperate to protect her, knowing full well there was not another chance to get away from the huge lizard.

The big racitor knew it too. It grinned its predatory grin and launched forward, jaws stretching wide open.


	13. THIRTEEN

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..13..**

THE RACITOR GUN BELLOWED.

Greon felt the roaring wash of the weapon sweep over him in a wave of heat and sound - for the second time that evening.

The racitor bull's jaws were wide open when the powerful eruption of armour piercing shrapnel ripped its head away in a gust of bone and blood. Headless, the creature now was nothing more than five meters of rendered meat and blood lulling in the water.

Greon glanced over his shoulder. Chagwin Mulbar was sat down in the mud a few strides away, staring wide-eyed over the smoking barrel of the racitor gun.

'That son-of-a-kroot kicks harder than a knarloc mare in heat!' the old mudhop vendor hissed, rubbing at his shoulder to make sure it was still attached. 'Don't know why Roddy don't put recoil dampers in the blasted thing. Damn near killed me. And from the wrong end too! Well don't just sit there, Guard boy, gapin' at everything. Get your sister up and away from there!'

Greon was up as fast as he could scurry. Chagwin used the butt of the weapon to get to his feet and together they managed to hoist Mericca Ann over the guardsman's shoulder.

The three survivors staggered away from the water. At least Mericca Ann was lucid enough to clamp her mouth shut and stifle her cries. The sound would have drawn every racitor in the region. Not even she wanted that it seemed.

Already the lizards were lining up along the muddy bank. Their huge heads peering up at the fleeing humans. Four pairs of mustard yellow eyes peering out from the murk.

The survivors picked their way through the thick undergrowth to the extreme edges of the electric lantern's circle of light. They would have to go back for it at some point. Haul the vessel down from the trees, back into the water. It was their only chance of survival and getting back to safety, but it could wait. It was simply too sweet a relief right now to be alive and breathing, and standing on firm ground.

'Thanks for saving our asses back there, old man.' Greon said over his shoulder. But the old mud hop vendor was gone.

Chagwin had been limping a little ways behind them, using the racitor gun as a makeshift crutch. Now the ancient musket lay unattended on the muddy loam, trails of smoke still curling up from the edges of its wide bell barrel. Had the Inquisition's Throne agent left the two siblings to their own devices all of a sudden, without a word of farewell? The idea seemed implausible. Why would the old man have bothered to save them in the first place?

Greon stooped down and picked up the racitor gun. As he did so he felt his sister's body hitching against him uncontrollably.

At first he assumed she was crying. She'd had a rough night of it, kidnapped from her husband and family, and almost devoured by racitors. But then Mericca Ann let out a shrill peel of laughter, as though she had heard the funniest joke in the world and could no longer contain herself.

'What the hell's wrong with you?' he asked.

She cupped her bound hands over his ear and in a sing-song whisper that sent icicles of dread running through him she said. 'I think our friend is in a bit of trouble, Gree.'

He was about to ask her what the hell she was talking about when he heard the undergrowth crackling behind him, as if beneath a prodigious weight. It was followed by a sound that made him feel very, very small. In that moment he could have happily raced back to the shore and jumped in the water to swim with the lizards. It was a sound that made even the _Thtick-ftick-thtick_ of prowling racitors akin to the tittering of children.

It was the sound of a bellows breath, the idling engine of a rhino tank but without any of the clatter of its machine parts. Something huge and lumbering had managed to sneak up on him and get very, very close. Except unlike the racitors it was not hunkered low in the water but stood high above him. Just by the sound of its breath it was enormous.

The smell of it was like nothing he had smelled in the El Arboran wilds. If he had to liken it to anything the closest he might get was the pheromone reek of gasbugs or the deep, musky odour of quag constrictors. A foul peppery stench that burnt the nose and made the stomach want to retch and vomit.

Greon remained motionless with his sister atop his shoulder. He did not dare look behind him, even though he could feel whatever it was waiting for him to turn around. To turn and see its mind breaking presence there in the jungle with him.

The guardsman's hands were slick with blood. It was all over the racitor gun. Thick glutinous blobs of it.

Then he heard the sharp wheezing of a man tormented beyond agony. Whatever stood behind Greon had plucked the old mudhop vendor up from the ground as though he were nothing more than a twig. And like a twig it was twisting Chagwin Mulbar back and forth in its grip.

'He's come for _you_!' Mericca Ann's words whispered so close to his ear. 'He wants you to turn around and look at Him, Gree. Look into His eyes and see Him in his True form!' Then she added, almost in gentle confidence. 'Maybe if you turn around He'll let your friend go.'

Greon dropped his sister to the ground. She collapsed in the mud, laughing shrilly as if it all was just a game of hide and seek to her and not certain death. Greon marvelled how she crawled away from him, so effortlessly, so determined, back through the mud on her shattered arms, crawling back toward _whatever_ was behind him. All her pain had vanished, or the unseen creature had done something to cut through it. She made sounds that were both sighs of rapture and barely contained giggles, like a child racing after a daydream.

 _~SEE US~_

Greon heard it speak though he did not understand how. The terrible, alien utterance broke into his mind, in meaning more than words. Greater than words perhaps, for they played upon his instincts and his base somatic responses. It prized him open as surely as a hunter's blade could pry open the shell of a mudscuttler.

Greon collapsed to his knees, trembling. He shook his head. Partly to shake out the horrid sound, partly to clear his mind from the terror permeating the core of his being. He could not allow himself to turn around. If he did it would be over. Greon Reacchus would be no more.

' _Reacchus_?' Chagwin's voice interrupted the cerebral assault. It sounded terribly strained, hovering upon the fringe of annihilation, but it was a blessed surcease from the alien contact. Making wet choking sounds, as though water were being forced down his throat and it was a fight to get each word out, the old man continued. _'_ The beast is... _Corporaptor callidus primus_! Tell my _master_... I did... my... _best_! Remember... your Benedictions... of the _Emperor_!'

Greon heard the sharp crack of bone and a moan of utter agony, but still he did not turn.

He had better things to do. Like ramming another detonation cartridge down the barrel of the racitor gun.

After all, why not? He was a dead man anyway. Why not go out fighting, as was written in the Benedictions themselves. The Ecclesiarchy had drummed it into his head often enough. Any guardsman worth his salt could remember at least a few of the verses within the Benedictions of the Emperor. And although there were over ten thousand to choose from, one in particular came to mind.

 _'The Emperor's Light shines from the centre,_

 _Invisible yet prevailing as the boundless wind._

 _Throughout all war, all strife and tribulation,_

 _Know thine Emperor and His Imperium abides within thee.'_

He muttered the litany over and over as he took the small case strapped to the side of the ancient musket and bit off the tip. The bitter taste of saltpeter and sulfur burned his tongue, tasting like the fires of righteous purification. The cartridge was damp but it would suffice.

 _~SEEEEEE USSSSS, REACCHUSSSSSS~_

Tears squirted from Greon's eyes and his nose began to bleed. His body and mind reacted violently against the psychic incursion. How anything could be so powerful was beyond him. He dared not think on it. This was a nightmare born from all those stories he had heard from other guardsmen. Xenos of such exquisite terrifying aspect that one look upon them could break your mind.

Greon tried not to look. He struggled not to look. He focused on packing the racitor gun tightly, accurately. Uttering the verse from the Benedictions over and over and over again. Waiting for the moment when the unseen creature's claws would tear him to pieces.

'Gree- _eeee_ ,' his sister implored him with a voice from their childhood. So sweet, full of all the hope and love that little sisters held for their older brothers. 'He wants you to join us. Just turn around now and it will all be better. Everything will be better.'

He almost looked then. He caught himself on the turn, pushing his vision downward at the tightly curled green-brown loam beneath his boots. But in his periphery he caught sight of the thing looming high above the tiny shape of his sister. The disparity in size was ominous. A hulking shadow of might and sinew, all gleaming black and gut red. What Greon imagined looked like the internal parts of a demon!

There was another sharp crack and Chagwin's moans were silenced.

The mudhop vendor's head landed at Greon's feet, and the Guardsman stared down at it in mortified wonder while Chagwin stared up; his eyes, alive only moments before, now glazed over into death right there before him.

Greon walked away then.

It was suicide, he knew, but at least _this_ was of his own choosing. He packed the racitor gun as he went, with trembling, fumbling hands and walked away from the xenos and his sister toward the edges of the marsh. Death by racitor or death by xenos, it was all the same.

What did the old coot say after they had fled Ironfig? 'Dead if you do, and eternally damned if you don't?' Greon knew now what Chagwin Mulbar meant by it. And as far as the guardsman was concerned dead was better than damned any day.


	14. FOURTEEN

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 **..14..**

SHADOWS CLAWED AT THE PERIMETER of light cast by the swaying electric lantern. From that shifting darkness Greon's sister pleaded with him in flat, resigned tones. 'Don't go upsettin' him, Gree. When The Father's askin' you to look at him its best you be lookin' or else He'll get real angry. And you don't want that. So come on back now. Please don't make it any worse on yourself.'

Greon waded out into the waters of the bayou up to his knees, out where the decapitated corpse of the racitor bull floated headless in an ever expanding circle of reptillian blood.

He was truly relinquishing himself to his decision now. As he breathed and waited for teeth as long as his trench knife to tear his legs apart he slammed the ramming rod down the mouth of the hunting musket and drew it out again, packing the powder down as tightly as possible whilst keeping the weapon free of the water.

 _Know thine Emperor and His Imperium abides within thee-_

That final line of the verse was comforting enough, but there was one other verse he thought was better. Another dull litany the preachers had drummed into him in the Astra Militarum that made more sense to him now than ever before. What had it been?

He closed his eyes. With death encroaching it was a struggle to concentrate. To plunge his thoughts down through veils of terror into the tranquil waters of memory.

What had it been?

Oh yes!

 _In the depths of piteous night when all else has failed,_

 _When flesh is rent, blood is spilt and the soul stands defenceless before the Foe,_

 _The Emperor's Will Shall Command Thine Hands,_

 _And purify the Foe with the blinding Light of His Righteous Certitude._

The creature's breath scolded the back of his neck. Like a hot wind in the dead of summer. Enough to make your skin scream. But Greon Reacchus continued to prime his weapon like a good guardsman must, muttering the litany softly and consistently, out over the brackish water.

~ _SEE USSSSSS_ _!_ _YOUR SISSSSSTERRR IS OURS AND SO WILL YOU BE, REACCHUSSSSSSSS_ ~

The voice filled his head, born from the great void between galaxies, even as his ears heard only the terrible, bestial hissing of its alien breath. An ancient breath and presence that knew the flooded forests and marshlands of old El Arbora better than Greon himself, better even than his father and his father's father before him.

 _~YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND WILL BECOME ONE WITH THE GREAT DEVOURERRRRR. IT IS YOUR LOT, SSSSSKIN OF MY SKIN, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD~_

Greon packed the shot down into the old hunting musket, straining to repeat the litany above the mind shredding incursion.

 _'The Emperor's Will Shall Command Thine Hands,_ _And purify the Foe with the blinding Light of His Righteous Certitude._ _The Emperor's Will Shall Command Thine Hands,_ _And purify the Foe with the blinding Light of His Righteous Certitude.'_

He waited for the Emperor of Mankind to embrace him. To pluck him up from this miserable moon. Just one man among trillions standing atop the surface of a pale brown speck floating at the ends of the galaxy, so far from the heart of Imperium, waiting for his terror to be superseded by the Emperor's Holy Wrath.

When his feet lifted from the water and his body rose into the air he believed his prayers were answered. But then a sharp agony drove deep into his body, and the dawning realisation of his plight slammed home. It was not the Emperor who had hold of him.

Huge, chitinous fingers encircled his ribs, lifting him with the ease of any mech-powerlifter. He was frozen in the monster's crushing grip.

The tyranid's entire body coruscated with malevolent energy. A fierce and impossibly alien energy that stopped his heart. A cold wash descended over him as his vitality drained away and the racitor gun began to slip from his useless fingers. Blood as warm as bathwater dribbled down his sides in a slow, flowing torrent.

This is it, Greon realised. The tyranid had got to him first. This is what it is, he thought, to fall into the arms of the Foe. To succumb to the worst the Emperor's subjects had to endure. Such a terrible atrocious darkness, to be broken and turned against the thing you loved.

 _~SEE US AND_ KNOW _USSSSSSS~_

He convulsed as its clawed fist cracked one rib, then two.

He saw his sister kneeling below him, her eyes streaming tears of exaltation, her fingers spread wide, her mouth agape in ecstasy.

Then he saw the horde gathered behind her.

Her children had come to watch him die, and they were legion. A small army of inhuman things that were neither human nor xenos but a terrible blending of the two. There was raw, pink flesh stretched over bony, protruding ridges belonging to a frame more primordial than the dawn of mankind. In places here and there on those mutated hunched figures, sharp spines cut through flesh, from elbows and knees and wrists. Long tusks jutted outward from slathering mouths. They howled and they hopped. A demented dance of the damned, come to watch the end of civilization alongside their mother and their Patriarch.

Greon startled at the realisation. This was why his sister had seemed so frail and hollowed out, a husk of what any ordinary mother should be. The thought was an abomination - utterly nonsensical to comprehend. What sorrowful depravities had poor Mericca Ann suffered from this alien monster?

Then Greon was turned in the creature's fist, to look wholly upon The Father.

A viciously elongated cranial carriage jutted toward him, inlaid with sunken eyes of the most exquisite golden hue. Like the light from a dying sun. Its jaw distended into a terrible leer revealing clusters of long translucent needle teeth that glimmered in alien slobber, a serpentine tongue quested toward him. It screeched hideously and he felt his stomach heave uncontrollably at the demonic sound. It flayed the very fabric of his mind.

 _~YOU ARE OURS NOW, MORTAL~_

Greon agreed. There was no other choice in it. It was so far beyond his capacity to struggle against the great leviathan that he merely nodded at it, like a throttled child, a broken puppet, wishing it would stop but knowing there was no way it could. All prayers and Benedictions to the Emperor were forgotten in that dawning of utter terror. The racitor gun slipped from his fingers.

Then it did stop.

Greon's mind cleared all at once. Though he wished it had not because of the sound that followed.

The Genestealer Patriarch screamed. And its scream shook the marshlands for kilometres around. Its demonic howl shot through the guardsman like a bolter round as the creature squeezed his ribs into shards of bone. It cast him away as though his soft, fleshy body were a burning hot brand in its grip and once again Greon flew through the air.

It was only then he saw from his vantage point in the air the great heads of the racitor bulls tearing into the creature's legs with their hypercarnivorous jaws. They had not come for him, Merrica Ann or the mudhop vendor – they had come for the xenos lord that threatened their territory.

Unlike the guardsman the racitors were not at all inhibited by the xenos' psychic power or its mind shredding screams. They tore into those powerful, spindled legs of chitin as they would any slow moving skimmer or motor launch that dared to trespass their submerged barrows. Chitin broke and tore. Streamers of black blood spurt out across the water and stained the brown-green loam along the shore. The bulls ripped and shredded the creature for all their worth, even as its gigantic, secondary scythe-like limbs shot down to skewer one and then another. It seemed an entire borough of racitors had swum downstream for this one glorified kill, encroaching upon their own territorial instincts to unite under one reptilian cause.

In the jungle the mutant spawn squealed their displeasure. Greon knew this because he now lay haphazardly amongst them, somehow conscious, somehow alive, watching their awful hooved and clawed feet bound past him in their attempt to reach their Father.

The Patriarch had stopped howling. Greon put it down to the fact that the xenos realised such a strategy no longer affected its aggressors. The guardsman sat up feeling the peculiar, distinctive crunch of shattered ribs inside the hot, wet bag of his body. There was no pain. He wondered if his Emperor had finally come to soothe his suffering, though more likely it was his adrenalin and howling terror that blinded his senses. Whatever had benumbed him there was one thing left for the Imperial guardsman to do.

The racitor gun lay on the loam half a dozen strides away, right there along the edges of the shore.

Greon stood up. His body sagged awkwardly but still the pain did not hit. He strode purposefully toward his goal, ignored by the ugly monstrosities hopping around him, ignored by his screaming sister who thrashed and bawled at the sight of her alien father being ripped to pieces before her, ignored by the xenos lord as it fought for its life. He was even ignored by the racitors while they savaged their prey.

The racitors were losing numbers quickly. Already five great bodies floated like lumpen logs down the bayou. There were more, many more, but they were much smaller bodied. Females come to finish off what the bulls could not, though they would not last nearly as long.

Greon snatched up the musket. The ramrod was still stuck down the throat of the weapon. He slammed down the powder several times, giving it one last hit for good measure before he hurled the ramrod aside. He slammed the butt of the musket up against his shoulder. The weapon was monstrously heavy and he staggered beneath its weight. Or was it that he had lost too much blood, and was too broken-bodied to use such a hefty weapon?

Greon took aim, focusing on the creature's skull.

The tried and true method of a headshot should be the certain way to kill a thing he did not understand. After all it worked for racitors just as well as it did humans. Why not a xenos warlord?

He followed the monster as it skewered one racitor after another and flung them bodily across the bayou like fish snatched up in the clutches of a crazed bear. But there was just something lacking in the curious shape and fabrication of that alien skull. It made the guardsman hesitate. It confused him. Why did his finger not depress the iron trigger? Something wasn't right.

Then he saw it.

Something far more important to this abysmal species than the huge cranial structure atop its swooping neck. It almost glowed in the shadowy gloom of the bayou.

A soft, wobbling mass of membranous tissue running down between the tyranid's armoured shoulders. A cluster of fist-sized nodules. There was something about those strangely shaped protuberances that made Greon think of the terrible voice inside his head.

The agony of his injuries were descending upon him fast. He levelled the racitor gun upon this new and strange target and whispered the litany from the Benedictions to the Emperor.

 _'The Emperor's Will Shall Command My Hands,_

 _And purify the Foe with the blinding Light of His Righteous Certitude!'_

Greon fired.

The racitors did the rest.


	15. Afterwards

**A Man Of His Word**

* * *

 _ **AFTERWARD**_

There was not much Greon Reacchus recalled after the action he saw on his homeworld in the swamps of the El Arboran Delta. But several glimmering images shone brightly enough to lend him some joy.

The Patriarch toppling face first into the canal with black blood spraying from its obliterated psychic node; the racitors ripping its flailing body to shreds; the brood cult fleeing like mad rabid animals back into the jungle; his sister trudging across to him weeping and sobbing but calling out his name as though she had just woken from a terrible nightmare that had gone on for too long. And it had, for far too long.

He remembered her trying to get him to stand but he had fallen unconscious in her shattered arms. When he awoke he was in a medicae dorm.

Somehow, with her last strands of will power, Mericca Ann had hauled her brother back to the marsh skimmer. The vessel had fallen from where it had been caught in the trees, shaken down by all the commotion of the Battle in the Bayou as it would be remembered. And impossible as it was, with her frayed mind and broken limbs, Mericca had piloted the skimmer and got them safely back to Old Town. The Imperial Guard had arrived. Men in black attended to his sister and others attended to him, they asked so many questions, but Greon did not mind. He was alive. He had survived. Chagwin was wrong about the Inquisition after all. They had turned up only days afterward rather than years.

The first man to take out a Genestealer Patriarch singlehanded was the word going around. He tried to tell them it was the racitors but the Imperial Guard officers who lauded him around, calling him 'Sergeant Reacchus, the One Shot Wonder' paid him no heed. The Magos Biologis and several Inquisitorial Interrogators inquired how the racitor gun operated, where he had aimed his killshot, how he had maintained his cool and kept his faith when so many others would have fallen.

He managed to see his sister for half a day before the Inquisition took her away. She was never herself again, a quiet murmuring thing, but he felt satisfied she was in safe hands and no longer part of that terrible alien cult. The Inquisition wanted to observe her for the duration of her existence they said, to study her and care for her so they might help others in similar circumstances. They claimed she was lost for good now, that she would never regain her sanity, but they would see she was treated kindly enough. They would need to learn as much as possible before the true battle began. Because the tyranid were on their way. All the signs clearly pointed to an invasion of terrifying proportions. And now the Imperial Guard wanted _Sergeant_ Greon Reacchus to train thousands of young guardsmen on How To Kill Tyranids With One Clean Shot. He told them it was the racitors, but they still don't believe him.

He is on his way to the front lines with his uniform, las rifle and racitor gun all in hand. His adventure is just about to begin, they tell him.

Greon thinks back on it all, and wonders if he should have kept his promise. He supposes if there is anything in this cold, dark universe to define how one man might outshine any other when facing the Foe it might just be to simply be a man of his word. Now, war hero of Verdantis Minor and slayer of tyranids, Sergeant Greon Reacchus must fulfil the promise he and trillions of others have made to the God Emperor of Mankind. To be the Hammer of the Emperor. Now they must face the true horror of the tyranid host together, and pray that that promise will be enough.

 _ **FABULA FINIS**_

* * *

 **A Salute to you all for reading! Thanks so much for enjoying it this far. It was fun to write. I was aiming at a H.P. Lovecraftian approach to the Tyranid which I think is splendidly suitable, but not the least bit original I know. Being a writer I would love to hear any feedback you have to offer. Thanks again. And now I shall rest my weary fingers and addled brain and do some reading of my own.**

 **RAWK!**


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